I want to get a fairly powerful (eg quad core) laptop as a desktop replacement, and sit it in a dock 95% of the time. Should I go for a USB dock or is a dedicated brand-specific dock better? How's the video with a dock (for gaming)?
Any recommendations for a combo laptop + dock other than what you get through Dell? Preferably with HDMI-audio out.
Thanks!
There's going to be a massive performance hit when you're sending signals via USB 3.0. For non-gamers this is not a big deal, but for gamers, having your laptop play a game while sending HD video streams thru USB is going to work your CPU pretty hard.
Spectacularly good responses, thanks, especially claymen.
Sounds like a USB dock is definitely out, which is good to know.
The main reasons I want a laptop are (a) to greatly reduce size, noise, and heat, and (b) to be able to carry it around the house. I wouldn't take it out of the house very much if at all.
Why no desktop? Convenience really. Sure you can build an equivalent desktop cheaper but it's nicer just having a little docked laptop on the desk instead of a big box underneath with dusty cables all over it.
Another issue with two separate units, I've currently got a Win 7 desktop and 8.0 laptop recently upgraded from XP, and have had all sorts of problems with sharing/syncing files etc. I just can't seem to get it all to work properly. Plus it's nice being able to browse the web and run all the same programs in the lounge room without having to buy a separate unit. Easier just to have a single unit. But I'm open to options.
I've considered the option of using a separate HDMI out / power / USB hub / local audio a bit like a dock, but that seems messy and a bit of a hassle to plug at least 4 cables in and out each time. Don't the various plugs and ports wear out after a while? I'll definitely consider this option though.
The point of the HDMI with audio by the way is that I currently use a Belkin AV4 wireless transmitter (http://www.belkin.com/us/p/P-F7D4515/) to dupe the monitor display and audio on a TV for watching streamed movies and such. It uses HDMI, so I guess I could use a HDMI splitter if not using a hub.
Fair enough, I guess the way I look at it is for the cost of a decked out gaming laptop I could buy both a desktop PC and a small ultrabook and have the best of both worlds. If you want to game on your laptop you can even use Steam streaming to run the game on the desktop and stream to the lappy which works surprisingly well.
What are you trying to sync? I'd get them both onto 8.1 and then convert to a Live ID for logging in, as that for one will sync a lot of stuff like desktop background etc. If you want files then take a look at One Drive for the nicer integration into 8.1 or if you already have Gmail then Google drive. Sync only what you need rather than everything.
I'm probably the extreme end of the setup but I have a desktop PC, self built with all the fruit for games and work. I run a corsair water cooler so it's super quiet, infact my XPS is louder under full load than this is. I run 3x24" off that machine so whether I am gaming or working I have the real-estate to get stuff done. I have been on Google Apps for some time so I paid the $2/month for an additional 100GB of data where I store the majority of my documents in Google Drive. For example my "My Documents" folder points to a folder within my Google Drive, this is done on all my machines so that they are all in sync with each other. Aside from that I use Chrome which syncs all my settings/extensions/bookmarks anyway (I have an Android phone so it ties to that as well). And my email is all webmail based so that's a no brainer.
In terms of portable devices, I run both a Surface Pro 2 and an XPS 13 although moving towards just using the Surface in the long term. But as mentioned each syncs my Google Drive so data is everywhere. I use a Targus ACP71AU dual screen dock at work which connects via USB3. I mainly bought this as my XPS did not support DP1.2 so this was the best option, plus it meant I just had to plug in a USB3 and power and I was done (the unit also supplies power via universal tips). This way I have all my data wherever I am, and can take the light weight lappy/tablet when visiting client sites. Far easier than lugging around a huge desktop replacement lappy.
Now obviously take all of this with a grain of salt as my use case is different, but mainly using it as an example of how I have done things so that it might give you some idea's and options as to what you can do.
I think in terms of cables you are always going to have a stack of them purely because of the devices you are plugging in. I don't see a desktop having any more or less cables than a laptop with a docking station. You still need power, network, keyboard/mouse (could be wireless on both) and all the monitor connections. Plus then your audio jacks.. You can get smaller cases now like shuttle PC's (or whatever they make now) if you want a small box instead. I guess you could just use the laptop screen but I would much rather gaming on a 24" or larger than on the laptop.
For options around browsing in the lounge, honestly I was using my iPad for that sorta stuff, and now doing so using the Surface. Sitting on the couch I don't want a heavy ass lappy. I do have a media PC though so I could use that to browse the web on the TV but the size of the screen with the 1080P res doesn't make it that nice. Movies/TV with XBMC/Plex are fine but I am also looking at replacing all of that with a Chromecast instead and streaming from the desktop/laptop instead. Maybe a Chromecast could be a better option if you just wanna stream some downloaded content to your TV?
Hm. I'm trying to avoid web services if possible. Thanks for the info, it's very helpful. I haven't heard of shuttle PCs but it sounds like it would be worth looking into the smaller desktops. Thanks, I've got a lot of thinking to do!
Update. I've been reconsidering my quad core requirement due to escalating costs (even for a desktop). I had no idea quad cores were still so much more expensive than dual cores - when I bought my desktop, quad core prices were similar and only had lower clock speeds. At least now the dual cores have hyperthreading, but I don't know how much difference that makes in practice.
So now I'm looking into a Microsoft Surface Pro (2 or 3, not sure yet) with dock:
http://www.microsoft.com/surface/en-au/support/hardware-and-…
I think it's powerful enough for my needs, certainly very portable, has a proper dock (not a USB one), and I can get away with having only 1 unit. The only immediate drawbacks are the need for things like an external DVD burner, and a HDMI adaptor/hub..
The Alienware X51 is another one that's caught my eye - a mini desktop. It's not that cheap though and if I wanted to do work in another room I'd need a tablet at more cost. I'm also looking into doing another build.. it's been a while… but there are so many options for cases and it's hard to know whether the right video card (etc) will fit.
The Alienware X51 is another one that's caught my eye - a mini desktop. It's not that cheap though
Of course its not cheap. It's a prebuilt gaming desktop from Dell, and Dell computers aren't cheap…
You should look into a whitebox, custom built Mini ITX desktop. Whirlpool can help you with that. There are existing builds that you can copy and even if you are not skilled at building your own desktop, you can get a shop to build one for you (labour fee applies, usually $70~90 dollars).
If quad core is a spec requirement, I suggest you look into a Dell, HP or Lenovo notebook that supports a Port Replicator.
Dell have docks for the Latitude series 14" and up, plus the Precision models.
HP do docks for the Elitebook and Mobile Workstation series.
Lenovo for T and W series.
You should also try out the Steam in-home streaming feature. It basically lets you stream games from one computer to another — the host computer running the game simply needs to have a CPU and GPU powerful enough to run the game, while the client computer receving the video feed simply needs to process the player inputs and render the H264 video stream (basically any computer can achieve this).
If you only ever play games at home, then setup would consist of a gaming desktop + a budget laptop with USB dock. Games will run only on the desktop but can be played on the laptop, so long as it's connected on the same LAN network. The downside of this is that you'll need to make sure that your computers have a wired connection and not wireless because Wifi introduces latency into the streaming service.
At least now the dual cores have hyperthreading, but I don't know how much difference that makes in practice.
If your workload is already taking advantage of multiple threads, it could add another 10-20% of CPU performance.
What is your toughest workload? Gaming? Video authoring? 3D Rendering? Massive Spreadsheets? Some workloads don't make a lot of use of additional threads - either from real or "hyper".
All my PCs have been home built for the last 20 years or so. My current PC is a whitebox which I built myself - I'm not worried about that. It's more about finding the configuration for one - and the link you sent scrimshaw will really help with that, thanks.
I've been looking at all three of Dell, HP, and Lenovo. Dell are a preference because my current lappy is a Dell and I have about 4-5 power supplies floating around so it's convenient, but I won't offset that against a bigger budget!
I hadn't heard of the Steam streaming thing, that's pretty neat. But I have a PS3 and am thinking of just using that for gaming. It's just no good for RTS and similar games, but a laptop or powerful tablet could probably manage it.
mrmark, thanks for that. Gaming is the toughest workload, mostly FPS, RTS, mostly games that are a few years old so I can get them cheap. FPS I'm happy to play on the PS3, RTS will be the toughest workload (Total War, Starcraft, Company of Heroes, that sort of thing). I do a bit of video encoding which is why I wanted a quad core, but a duo would be sufficient for that. No 3D rendering or video authoring.
I also do a lot of work on the home computer which involves multiple Excel spreadsheets, Word documents, and webpages open simultaneously, as well as Citrix. That's one of the main reasons I'm looking into multi cores and plenty of RAM (I have 8GB and dual core now, and it's good enough but I'd like it all to run quicker).
Thanks again for the continuing help guys/gals!
Thanks, too early to pull the trigger! :)
If you want to use it as a desktop replacement I would go with one that has an actual dock over a USB one.
Having said that I have used USB2, USB3 and a proper docking station and they do work but have their own issues.
A proper dock is usually vendor specific, and in some cases model specific (or at least models within a certain range). They have significantly better performance and can be a bit nicer if you are using a lot of high bandwidth USB3 devices etc. But they are a bit bigger compared to the USB docks and may not necessarily be available at all for some models.
USB2 docks are to be honest pretty poor, basically they were slow. People were trying to drive 1080p monitors over USB2 and it was just not a fun experience. Even on lower resolutions they were a bit of a pain no matter how much DisplayLink tech claims it can compress and make it faster blah blah blah. Avoid them where possible unless you have absolutely no other option. You won't be playing games on it I can tell you this.
USB3 docks on the other hand are fairly good, they obviously aren't something that is going to play games but you can play movies and work without any issues. I've been using one with my Dell XPS13 for almost 12 months now and it's a joy. However… I have had some issues, for example one USB3 port on the left of my XPS13 drops out all the time when using the dock, whereas the right hand one is awesome. This also applies to other devices I have plugged in and others have reported similar issues. I suspect due to power sharing on that port or something equally annoying. I run two 1080p displays with no issues doing my general consulting work all day and so long as you keep your USB drivers and DisplayLink drivers up to date there tends to be no major issues short of the underlying USB3 issues themselves.
Pretty much every USB dock out there is using some form of DisplayLink chip, just make sure if you go down this path you get the one with the latest revision. But as you mentioned gaming your only real choice is a true docking station.
One last option however… now this isn't really a dock but another option entirely. Direct HDMI or DisplayPort out? Now this really depends if you want multiple monitors which the above docks can do. But if your laptop supports DisplayPort 1.2 and your monitors do as well you can actually run two DisplayPort monitors off the one port. And I think you can daisy chain them so long as the monitors in the chain are all 1.2 (the last one can actually just be 1.1 so long as it's the end of the line). That might be another option and then just plugin your audio or something. You could mix it up and go for a USB3 hub + USB Sound card and the direct video out to minimize the number of cables (all your devices would go via the Hub). But obviously that could have it's own set of issues if your USB3 is twitchy.
And finally… why not just get a desktop PC? And a smaller tablet or similar for on the road? Do you really need desktop replacement laptop performance on the road? Given that most are power hungry and heavy? You may be better off with a good desktop and an ultrabook or even a surface pro or something (staying within the windows ecosystem here).